Originally Posted by Blacksheep
I
On the subject of aircraft with common wings, somehow the Bristol Britannia's wings ended up on the Shorts Belfast.
But upside down, apparently...
In July 1954 The Bristol Aeroplane Co became a shareholder in Short Brothers & Harland Ltd, subscribing £360,000 of additional capital to set up a second production line for the Brittania at Queen's Island Belfast. O.R.323 had been issued by the Air Staff for a medium-range freighter for R.A.F. transport Command. Both Bristol and Shorts explored the possibility of fully exploiting the Brittania wing and power plant in a high-wing freighter with either nose or tail loading by ramp from ground level these projects being Bristol Type 195 and Short P.D.18. Bristol and Shorts had already agreed to co-ordinate their planning of future projects to avoid wasteful competition. As a result it was agreed that the Short's proposal should proceed in preference to Bristol's.
In March 1959 the Brittanic 3A was proposed to meet the Air Staff's requirements this proposal used the standard Brittania wings bolted to a parallel-chord centre-section of 16ft 6in in span built into the top of the fuselage, thus increasing increasing the wing area to 2,454 sq ft and moving all the nacelles outboard by 8ft 3in; the inner nacelles were moved 4ft back towards the wing roots thus creating the opportunity to fit larger airscrews at a later date if needed.
In April 1959 the name Brittanic was dropped in favour of the name Belfast.Several major components were sub-contracted, the rear fuselage and loading ramp to Saunders-Roe, power plant installation to Vickers-Armstrong in view of the similarity to the existing design for the Vanguard.
The design and manufacture of the Belfast wing was assigned to Bristol aircraft Ltd.